Before Bob Stoops arrived in 1999 as the Sooners’ 21st head coach, Oklahoma didn’t bother much putting the football in the air – largely because it didn’t have to and also as Oklahoma alum and former quarterback Darrell Royal once said: “When you throw a pass, three things can happen and two of them are bad.”
The split-T formation popularized by Bud Wilkinson’s dominant Oklahoma teams in the 1950s and the Wishbone offense that Barry Switzer’s Sooner teams in the 1970s and ’80s parlayed into three national championships and 12 Big Eight Conference crowns were best-geared to multiple-option, power running games and executed to near perfection by a seemingly endless supply of uber-talented running backs recruited to apply their flashy speed and ground skills at Oklahoma.